Pickles by Brian Crane for September 20, 2022

Earl has her trained!

Can Earl do anything right without Opal scolding him?

Neatly folding seems to be a woman’s thing – most of the time.

That’s how you do a fitted bottom sheet…right?

Incompetence; The greatest labor-saving device.

Earl should have offered to ‘help’ Opal with folding the laundry.

Well played, Earl.

Probably a good thing Opal thought that out before answering Earl.

Under that grizzled white mustache is a sly, knowing grin.

Panel 3 is how I fold fitted sheets!

He should buy one of those t-shirt folding boards, and show her how good you can fold them.

At least he offered.

Of course, it’s easy to offer when you know you’ll turned down, but still, it counts!

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.

It looks to me that Earl is borrowing one of Ray Barone’s tricks.

Time for a lesson in folding ;-)

He doesn’t know how to fold clothes right!

It’s the thought that counts. For good AND ill. Start him with something small. Folding socks. Wait, he’d have to match them first. With Earl, It could easily spiral out of control.

she knows you too well there Earl.

Have they ever disclosed what his occupation was before he retired?

I fold all the laundry at our house, why? because I’m better at it and I don’t leave it sitting around in baskets for several days.

They’re never happy Earl

IT WORKED..!!!!!! – All those years of “fail conditioning” paid OFF..!!!!

Don’t say I didn’t offer….but everyone has their own way…

My wife folds bath towels end to end, and then across. So then I need to refold them lengthwise to hang them up.

It’s a trick Opal, he really has no intention of folding the laundry. There must be a word for such treachery.

The only clothes I have to fold are my skivvies. Everything else goes on a hanger.

Offer made, and offer declined. Next are complaining about Earl never helping out.

The whole point of folding clothes is that you don’t have to IRON so many of them! Especially tees, jeans and fitted sheets.

And then she’s going to get mad at him for not helping her fold.

Earl folds the clothes as my husband does, he just takes it out of the dryer and throws them on the bed, getting everything nice and wrinkled.

That is very similar to what I did when I was 10 to get out of washing the dishes. I was sooo clumsy, I broke a few glasses, a couple of bowels and in just a couple of weeks my mother told me to stop washing the dishes. I thought vacuuming was much easier than washing dishes

It is that simple!

Never have I ever offered that …. till maybe after I saw how Sheldon did it.

My wife doesn’t like the way I fold the towels even though I do it the same way she does. So, I simply stopped doing it since she was unfolding and redoing them herself anyway. But then she also is a stickler that the corners of two stapled papers have to be exactly lined up so probably some OCD there.

Funny! I, the 35 year old physically disabled son, do 99% of the folding!

But he gets points for asking, right?

It’s an old ruse, offer to help then do such a bad job you’ll never be asked to do anything again.

Often true. Not that wrinkle, but a different wrinkle is better.

You can start with the fitted sheets, that should keep him busy for awhile.

Opal knows Earl too well.

I finally gave up and leave my husband to fold his own clothes.

The husband of a friend of my wife tried this. Anything he didn’t want to do, he made a point of doing incompetently so that his wife had to redo it. He thought he was so smart because she never asked him to do those tasks again. He was completely blindsided when she filed for divorce.

Earl would leave the laundry in an untidy heap.